Katrina's lessons still drive the W.H.

For anyone with doubts about whether the Hurricane Katrina debacle still dominates the politics of disaster response and recovery, consider the careful answer given by White House press secretary Jay Carney when he was asked whether President Barack Obama looked out over the swollen Mississippi River en route to his immigration speech in Texas last week.

Mindful of the criticism President George W. Bush received for peeking out the window but not stopping when Air Force One flew over hurricane-ravaged New Orleans in 2005, Carney had a choice between two bad alternatives: Say yes, and risk portraying his boss in the same light as Bush; or say no, and expose Obama to allegations that he didn’t care enough to be curious.

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“I haven’t seen him do that, but I haven’t been with him for the full flight so far,” said Carney, quickly changing the subject. “I remember when we were flying out of Fort Campbell on Friday, there was a lot of flooding in Kentucky. It’s obviously quite devastating what we’re seeing now on television.”

Faced with a seemingly continuous string of natural disasters this winter and spring, the Obama White House so far has demonstrated an acute understanding of the lessons Bush learned the hard way during the Katrina crisis. The president has appeared in disaster zones, walked through the rubble of a neighborhood, made biblical references to try to comfort victims and promised to help communities rebuild, aware that he will reap most of the credit — or shoulder all of the blame — based on perceptions of his response to a crisis.

Since taking office in 2009, Obama has made 174 disaster declarations in nearly every state and several U.S. territories, responding to droughts and wildfires in the West, floods in the Gulf Coast states, Northeastern blizzards and storm-triggered rock slides in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Last year alone, Obama signed 81 disaster declaration requests — the most in modern presidential history, exceeding the 75 orders signed by Bush in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1996.

As the nation’s chief executive, Obama ultimately gets to decide which areas will receive the full array of federal assistance and his personal attention. While those decisions are based on Federal Emergency Management Agency official recommendations, evaluations by personnel on the ground determine whether the situation meets the objective standards.

That occasionally makes the line between a local crisis and a federal disaster a close call and can leave the president vulnerable to allegations that he put politics ahead of doing the right thing.

“The way an elected official manages a disaster can make or break a political career,” Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican strategist, told POLITICO. “While a local politician can directly manage a crisis and reap immediate rewards from his constituents, Ayres added, the stakes are even higher for a president, with “more downside than upside.”